Mount Olympus National Monument

THE MOUNT OLYMPUS NATIONAL MONUMENT Previous to the expeditions of the latter part of the nineteenth century, the area which includes within its bounds the present Mount Olympus National Monument was the subject of the most fanciful speculation. This region, embracing the very heart of the rugged alpine area lying in the center of the Olympic peninsula, was her alded widely as the most isolated and unknown country in the United States. Rumors circulated of prairie or valley lands supposedly ex isting amidst the mountains, harboring ferocious animals and wild cannibal Indian tribes. No definite knowledge concerning this vir gin area existed; while the Indian dwellings on the fringes of this region continued to relate strange legends about the mountain coun try. But today, happily, the scenic beauty and grandeur of the heart of the Olympics is common knowledge. The notion of fierce animals and cannibals has been displaced as enthusiastic thousands are coming more and more to realize the unlimited possibilities of the Olympics as a playground and recreational area of unsurpassed beauty and pleasure. The Olympic peninsula is dominated by the huge central mass, the Olympic Mountains, which diminish gradually in altitude until they form a low plateau on the edges of the peninsula. The moun tains in the center, of which Mount Olympus with an altitude of 8200 feet is the culminating peak, tend to run east to west and are from twenty miles long by fifteen wide. A western limb with de creasing altitude extends toward Cape Flattery. It is believed from a geologic standpoint that the Olympics are new and that the "rav ages of time" have not yet worn off the rugged and sharp edges and peaks which are so strikingly characteristic of the Olympics.1 Henry Landes gives the following description of the geologic for mation of these mountains :2 "It may be tentatively suggested that the Olympics represent a region once worn down nearly to a base level, and then uplifted to a height of about 8000 feet above the sea and subsequently eroded by streams of water and ice to their present rugged outlines. The higher peaks, such as Olympus, represent more resistant masses which in the former period of erosion did not reach a true base 1 Smith, A. A., "The Olympics," Steel Points, Vol. 4, 144, July, 1907. 2 Landes, Henry, HNotes on the Geography of the Olympics," The Mountaineer, Vol. 1, 3'6-37, June, 1907. (214) The Mount Olympus National Monument 215 level. The forces of upheaval, it may be said, prepared a mighty block of rock, out of which the forces of nature, represented by the weathering elements, running water and glaciers, have chiseled the mountains as we now know them." Concerning the rock formation of the mountains we cannot do better than to quote the words of Professor C. E. Weaver:3 "The great central mass of the Olympic mountains. is composed of metamorphic rocks. The most conspicuous varieties are schists, slates, and quartzites. Around the coastal border of this interior metamorphic area are sedimentary rocks, consisting of sandstones and shales, and associated with these are igneous lava flows. Along the eastern and southern margins of this area are boulders of gran ite and other rocks which are not found in the bed rock series of the Olympic mountains, but are common in the mountains on the east and north sides of Puget Sound. The granites and similar rocks were brought into the Olympics and deposited there by great glaciers which at one time came down from the Cascades and from the mountains of British Columbia. The glaciers occupied the Puget Sound basin and filled the broader valley of the Olympics." Situated as it is, first in the path of the moisture-bearing south westerly winds of the Pacific, the Olympic peninsula is subjected to very heavy precipitation, perhaps exceeded in no other portion of the United States. Rainfall varies from forty inches north and east of the mountains to one hundred to one hundred twenty inches annual precipitation in the Upper Straits-Flattery region and along the Pacific. In the mountains sixty to one hundred feet of snow £all per winter, F. W. Mathias reporting as much as two hundred fifty feet of snowfall annually on Mount Olympus. 4 Approximately fifty glaciers exist in the mountains, Mount Olympus boasting the fol lowing: White, Ice River, Humes, Blue, University, Hubert, and several smaller ones. These glaciers constitute the headwaters of the principal streams which radiate in all directions from this central mass area. Flowing westward to the Pacific are the Bogachiel, Hoh, Queets, and Quinault; northward to the Straits of Juan de Fuca is the Elwha; and eastward to Hood's Canal are the Dosewallips, Duckabush and the Skokomish. The mild tempered climate, the heavy precipitation, and the fertility of the soil have combined to make the peninsula one of the 3 Weaver, C. E., "Notes on the Bed-rock Geology of the Olympic Peninsula," The M o.",tai"eer, I, 59·60, Sept., 1907. 4 Mathias, F. W., "The Olympic Mountains," Mazama, X, 34, December, 1926. "~~. 216 Clifford Edwi'Ylc Roloff most densely forested regions in North America. The lower slopes are covered with gigantic trees, thousands of acres of which average five feet in diameter and one hundred fifty feet high. Trees of twen ty-eight feet in diameter have been found and great portions of red fir average two hundred forty feet in height. Amid this forest is "an undergrowth of almost bewildering luxuriance."5 Tangled vines, huge ferns, wild flowers cover the forest floor. This, together with great tree trunks which fell centuries ago and which remain covered with moss a foot thick, make the jungle impenetrable without cutting one's way through. The jungled forest is so dense that even at high noon the forest remains in twilight. This heavy forest covers the mountains up to four thousand feet, where grassy, flowery openings appear in the forest. The timber line is reached very low, at 5500 feet, because of the excessive snowfall. The forests of the peninsula contain one-eighteenth of all the standing timber within the one hundred sixty national forests of the United States. Of this, thirty-nine per cent is hemlock, thirty-one per cent Douglas fir, sixteen per cent Amabilis and other true firs, seven per cent cedar, and seven per cent spruce. Twenty-nine bil lion feet is over mature at present. By reforestation it is possible to use three hundred million feet annually without encroaching upon the forests within the National Monument. Within the Monument relatively little of the land has any value as a timber area.6 Wild flowers grow in profusion, among which are included the cassiope, white heather, mountain anemone, phlox, and "Indian bas ket grass." There are to be found a number of new and distinct species in the higher altitudes of the Olympics. Here amid the moun tains are great flowering meadows and parks, with a curious inter mingling of mountain and lowland forms. The Olympics afford the most luxuriant habitat for the Olympic elk and deer. Thousands of acres of finest grazing lands; watered by numerous streams, and fanned by the Pacific winds; free from flies, mosquitoes and annoying insects, furnish ideal forage from June to December. Blueberries, huckleberries, bearberries grow thickly just below the icefields and attract the black bear. The wolf, fox, lynx, otter, beaver also inhabit the mountains. The waters of the peninsula are the paradise of the angler. The trout are numbered by the millions and are of great size. 5 Mills, Enos A., Yo"r National Parks, 230. 6 These figures are from Hazard, Joseph T., Snow Sentinels of tlte Pacific North west, 48. The Mount Olympus National Monument 217 The scene afforded by a vantage point on one of the peaks of the Olympics is superb. On one hand the sea with its islands; Puget Sound with its scattered isles; to the south Mount Rainier, Mount Adams, and a beautiful sight of Mount St. Helens "whose head and shoulders rise a perfect snowy cone above the purple forest robe and stand as perfectly poised as a Greek statue of marble."1 This view has been described beautifully by S. C. Gilman:8 "As for scenery, perched on one of the numerous accessible peaks you are surrounded by towering, sky··piercing pinnacles and ragged, rocky ice-capped ridges that are plowed and harrowed by slides of rock and ice and chiseled and worn by ages of rushing water, mantled with snow and garlanded with great patches of roses and daisies and dainty mountain flowers and gowned with dense, dark evergreen forests, reaching far down into cavernous depths of canyon and ravine, across which on some opposite mountain side is rushing from its icy fountain head a tumultous mountain tor rent which finally dashes over a lofty precipice and is lost in a veil of mist in the valley below. Away to the west is seen the ocean with its lazily rolling billows, the dark trail of a steamer's smoke, and the white sails of a ship just showing above the horizon. To the east lie Hood's canal and Puget Sound, with their bays and arms and inlets spread out like silver leaf on a carpet of green. Beyond rise the dark, wooded slopes and snow-clad summits of the Cascades, with grand old Rainier standing guard to the southeast and the majestic Baker to the northeast." Discovery and Exploration No records exist of any expeditions by the Indians of the Olympic peninsula into the center of the rugged mountainous area; apparently, the region lay untouched by human foot until the white man very tardily entered the unknown country.

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